I'm the founder of WorkplaceTrends.com, a research and advisory membership service for HR professionals. I also wrote the New York Times bestselling book, Promote Yourself, and the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0. In 2010, I was named to the Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 List and in 2012, I was named to the Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30 List.

Hire For Attitude

Mark Murphy is the author Hiring for Attitude, as well as the bestsellers Hundred Percenters and HARD Goals. The founder and CEO of Leadership IQ, a top-rated provider of cutting-edge research and leadership training, Mark has personally provided guidance to more than 100,000 leaders from virtually every industry and half the Fortune 500. His public leadership seminars, custom corporate training, and online training programs have yielded remarkable results for companies including MicrosoftMicrosoft, IBMIBM, GE, MasterCardMasterCard, MerckMerck, AstraZenecaAstraZeneca, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Johns Hopkins.

In this interview, Mark talks about why so many new hires fail so quickly, why soft skills are so important now, how the hiring landscape is changing, and more.

Why do so many fail within the first 18 months of taking a job?

When our research tracked 20,000 new hires, 46% of them failed within 18 months. But even more surprising than the failure rate, was that when new hires failed, 89% of the time it was for attitudinal reasons and only 11% of the time for a lack of skill. The attitudinal deficits that doomed these failed hires included a lack of coachability, low levels of emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament.

Are technical and soft skills less important than attitude? Why?

It’s not that technical skills aren’t important, but they’re much easier to assess (that’s why attitude, not skills, is the top predictor of a new hire’s success or failure). Virtually every job (from neurosurgeon to engineer to cashier) has tests that can assess technical proficiency. But what those tests don’t assess is attitude; whether a candidate is motivated to learn new skills, think innovatively, cope with failure, assimilate feedback and coaching, collaborate with teammates, and so forth.

Soft skills are the capabilities that attitude can enhance or undermine. For example, a newly hired executive may have the intelligence, business experience and financial acumen to fit well in a new role. But if that same executive has an authoritarian, hard-driving style, and they’re being hired into a social culture where happiness and camaraderie are paramount, that combination is unlikely to work. Additionally, many training programs have demonstrated success with increasing and improving skills—especially on the technical side. But these same programs are notoriously weak when it comes to creating attitudinal change. As Herb Kelleher, former Southwest Airlines CEO used to say, “we can change skill levels through training, but we can’t change attitude.”

How will the hiring landscape be different in 2012 and beyond?

Between the labor pool from China and India and the fact that there are so many workers sitting out there unemployed, we can find the skills we need. The lack of sharp wage increases in most job categories is further evidence of the abundant supply of skills. Technical proficiency, once a guarantee of lifetime employment, is a commodity in today’s job market. Attitude is what today’s companies are hiring for. And not just any attitude; companies want attitudes that perfectly match their unique culture. Google and Apple are both great companies, but their cultures are as different as night and day.

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I definitely agree with this perspective, if not a bit surprised at just how high the percentages are. However, I think this is only half of the picture. Surely, if someone has made it through a proper interview process, the employer has some idea that the attitude is at least a close fit. So why so many failures?

I wrote a short piece about the employer’s obligations in cases like this a while back. In short, no matter what attitude the new employee brings to the table, it is incumbent on the employer to take advantage of the new perspectives that person brings. In other words, if attitude is indeed such a major component of the business’ success, it is in the employer’s interest to take all new approaches into consideration. Again, however, this assumes that the newbie has made it through a proper vetting process. If you aren’t making the right hiring choices in the first place, all bets are off.

Dan, you cited that “89% of the time it was for attitudinal reasons and only 11% of the time for a lack of skill. The attitudinal deficits that doomed these failed hires included a lack of coachability, low levels of emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament.” How true.

The more self-aware you are about how your personality, inter- and intra-personal communication skills, and energy affects and fits into making your work culture a pleasant place to go to work…the more your quality of life improves. The side effect of choosing to have a good attitude, to be passionate about what you do is better relationships.

Thank you for highlighting that when the study is talking about “attitude” it includes emotional intelligence–which includes skill sets like gender based buying and selling, and how to communicate with others in their language.

There are so many inventories out there to take and learn how to better communicate.

I like thinking in solutions, not just problems. And if there are job seekers reading this article and reader’s comments wondering how they can be hired long-term in their next job…I’d suggest exploring the different inventories like DISC, MBTI, KT, EQ, and GQ to up their social-emotional learning IQs. Take them, extrapolate out what sounds like you, have someone help explain/read up on the info, and then apply the info and skills learned to your life. I have watched time and again with people how having greater insight into how they tick and interact with others has changed their lives. Inspiring!

The failure of new hires is due as much, if not more, to what the company does in the year after hiring. I’ve seen new hires with great attitude and enthusiasm ground down by corporate bureaucracy, office politics and a failure by the employer to foster their engagement in their work. They get discouraged and frustrated…no wonder they don’t perform. It’s too easy to simply blame the new employee for poor attitude.

I’d agree that attitude works both ways. Especially with top tier talent, one of the key challenges is understanding that top talent often becomes that way because they have the latitude within their previous company to push the boundaries, which means that they can come up with solutions outside the box of expectations. This means that they are used to having at least a say in the longer term strategic vision of a company, and when denied this, it can make them feel resentful, under-appreciated and ultimately ripe for a move elsewhere.

Additionally, these people are much more likely to jump ship if they don’t see in a company what they want from it, or if they see the danger signs – a company where they don’t see a potential growth path, where there’s a higher turnover at senior levels, or where their talents are only minimally utilized. It’s not unknown (indeed quite common) for companies to pick up “star talent” not because they want to make use of that talent but because it becomes a marketing point – we have such-and-such, inventor of this product or protocol, on our staff – even if the people they hire then end up sitting idle. Hire a person for their talents, not their marketability – hiring for talents that are then utilized will not only keep that person happy, but also give you good value for your investment. Hire for marketing, and your company looks foolish when that star talent jumps ship for better opportunities elsewhere.

Attitude is very important. This is something that schools should be teaching the 20-somethings. I am so tired to being interviewed by these young people and they are the ones that need the soft skills training. Hire the older workers, they already know how to deal with people.

I recently interviewed Herb Greenberg, who founded Caliper Corporation, and he would agree with the focus on attitude. He’s applied their assessment to the realm of professional sports (including the 2004 NBA Champions Detroit Pistons), helping teams in their draft selection.

In his words, “psychology is more important than talent when it comes to winning.”

Let us assume that Mark is a very young-looking 45 and that he spent the first 28 years of his life learning to be so clever that he would be consulted by 100,000 people personally.

Let us also assume that “personally” means he talked to then one-to-one and not en masse in an auditorium.

This means that he has spent the last 23 years talking personally to 2.75 leaders per hour. Every day. Every year. So his knowledge must be getting pretty rusty by now (unless the 100,000 people who consulted him wanted to know about talking to a lot of people.

(Do these people form queues outside his office?)

But maybe Forbes is mistaken and used a very old photo and Mr. Murphy is in fact 65. So he’s talked to 1.6 leaders every day for the last 37 years?